the solitary reaper, in sapphics

From the third volume of Musa Americana, a 1920 collection of Latin poetry by Anthony Geyser, S.J., of Campion College (which seems to have morphed into a school for boys until closing in 1975, and which has become a state prison since then….):

It is hoped that the publication of the metrical Odes of the Third Series of _Musa Americana_ will help to arouse renewed interest in the Classical Literature of the Romans, and to stimulate a great love for the inimitable beauty of Horace’s immortal Odes.

Perhaps Geyser’s text (which doesn’t seem to be well known, even to Google) didn’t quite live up to its ambitions. But there’s some very neat material here that’s worth poking around—for instance, Geyser directs his talents to a translation of Wordsworth’s “The Solitary Reaper”:

Behold her single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!

Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

He comes up with “Messor Solitaria”:

Solam in agris hanc videas puellam,
Montium florem! Cererem metendo
Concinit dulces numeros; morare, aut
Perge quietus!

Sola dum sternit segetes ligatque,
Concinit maestos modulos puella;
Arrigas aures! Humilis repletur
Carmine vallis.

Not bad! Geyser seems to have been pretty prolific, too: a 1922 volume of his Musa Americana series includes a translation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into Latin iambics.